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Answering A Letter About CHOICES
We received an email from someone who is in the CHOICES program who is angry at "Republican" opposition to CHOICES.
CHOICES is our own, local version of Obamacare - kind of. It is a government run healthcare program.
Following is our response with the original email below that (the name and email address of the sender has been redacted):
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From the tone of you letter, I can guess that it is probably futile to answer you. You have strong feelings about what you think has taken place with CHOICES. Still, I am answering you, and I hope that it will shed some new light, for you, on the issue of CHOICES.
First, let's put aside the notion that Republicans don't want to help people. That simply isn't true. Every study that has ever compared the charitable giving of Republicans vs. Democrats has shown that Republicans give far more, of their own free will and time, to help the needy than do Democrats.
Next, let's address the notion that we Republicans were all born with silver spoons up both ends. The members and volunteers of the Alachua County Republican Executive Committee are not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. They are blue collar, small business owners. They are people that fix air conditioners, provide pots and pans and ladles to restaurants. They are computer technicians, homemakers, ministers, office managers and office clerks. I haven't checked, personally, I am pretty sure that there aren't any silver spoons embedded anywhere in their anatomy.
Let's address the myth that opposition to CHOICES is just a Republican thing. It isn't. In a county in where Democrats far outnumber Republicans, CHOICES was voted in by only 80-something votes, and that was a primary election in which the Democrats had a primary and the Republicans did not. That doesn't happen unless a lot of Democrats voted against it.
Now, let's examine why so many people are against CHOICES. There are a whole host of problems with the way that the County leadership pushed and has handled CHOICES.
The first problem is that we were told that CHOICES was designed to help 15,000 working uninsured. When citizens asked to see the basis for that number, none could be produced. No study was ever done to see how big the problem really was or wasn't. It was a made up number. So they built a program and taxed enough money designed to handle 15,000 working uninsured. To this day there are only just over 3000 people in the program, and that is after millions of dollars in marketing and, gratuitously, loosening the requirements for qualification.
Next, the county grossly underestimated the amount of money that would be taken out of circulation in our local economy. To this day, CHOICES has taken in more than $60 million in revenue, with over $40 million of that just sitting in the bank.
Of course, there were some other minor problems with CHOICES, too. First, the county used our own tax dollars against us to advocate for it. Second, they purposely put it on a primary ballot where they knew that voter participation would be lower, helping its passage. Had it been on a general election ballot, it wouldn't have passed. Next, it was a huge conflict of interest for the county commissioner that championed it because the biggest beneficiary was her employer. Finally, the conflicts of interest continued when CHOICES hired that same commissioner's daughter-in-law in a really nice paying job.
So, the questions at hand are:
1. With $60 million, could we have helped a whole lot more working poor than what CHOICES is doing? The answer is yes.
2. If our only mission was to help the working uninsured, could we have done a much better job of helping those people with a lot less money by studying and learning how big the problem was, to begin with. Again, the answer is yes.
Do I begrudge the fact that CHOICES has helped you? No, I don't, but I do begrudge the fact that we had such a poorly designed program that a lot fewer people were positively impacted by that $60 million than could have been.
Thank you, so much, for taking your time to give us your comments.
Stafford Jones
Chairman, Alachua County Republican Party
Subject: Alachua Republican Party Website: To the "Republicans" of this county.
I have lived in this county for 5 years working for every last one of them since I arrived and a member of the choices program for the last 3 as my employment grants me no benefits and while doing the best I can barely enough to provide for my family it has helped me greatly getting medical treatment that I would other wise suffer without and I while I am not easily offended the act of the Republicans in in this county disgust me in their attempt to break those already being bent beyond their limits. The same people who have no idea what it is like being oppressed by the rich who have never wanted for anything in this life, who more than likely where born with not only a silver spoon in their mouths but in the other end as well. Choices is a great program that has helped many people, you on the other hand, are nothing more than pathetic vermin disgracing this country and all it stands for.
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On Saturday, May 7th, we are hosting a Pirate Party in honor Alachua County's most prolific pillagers and plunderers, Mike Byerly, Paula DeLaney and Rodey Long. We doubt that they will show up, but we are going to honor The Taxing Three for their ability to simultaneously tax us into oblivion and create a $400 million road repair deficit at the same time.